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Google Bans Ads For Payday Loans (theverge.com) 134

Posted by BeauHD from the right-thing-to-do dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Google has decided it doesn't want to promote predatory lending practices that are harmful to consumers, so the company has decided to ban ads for payday loans and some related products from their ads systems. "Research has shown that these loans can result in unaffordable payment and high default rates for users so we will be updating our policies globally to reflect that," Google's product policy director, David Graff, writes in a blog post. Payday loans often come with extremely high interest rates if they aren't paid back immediately, which can push people further in debt. Georgetown's Center on Privacy and Technology notes in a statement, "Payday lenders profit from people's weaknesses -- particularly poor people and people of color. Every time someone clicks on those ads, search engines profit, too." While Google may lose some revenue in the short-run by removing these ads, the move will likely benefit the company in the long-run (positive PR doesn't hurt) as Google users should have more trust in the ads they come across. Payday loans will be banned from Google globally starting June 13th.
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Google Bans Ads For Payday Loans More

Google Bans Ads For Payday Loans

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  • Excellent (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nethemas the Great ( 909900 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2016 @06:45PM (#52094815)
    Now when are they going to ban this one weird trick that almost broke the Internet among all the other forms of idiot bait.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ntsucks ( 22132 )

      Please !

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      Now when are they going to ban this one weird trick that almost broke the Internet among all the other forms of idiot bait.

      I see you are using Adblock Plus. Go into the settings and disable the whitelist of people who paid them (such as Taboola).
      If you are using no adblock, you are the sort of people they are baiting.

  • and raise 2 harmfuls. maybe your ad is next.

  • Trust (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nmb3000 ( 741169 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2016 @07:07PM (#52094909) Journal

    users should have more trust in the ads they come across

    Hahahahaha, no. That ship sailed a long time ago.

    • Hardly. When I look at internet ads changing over the years they have become increasingly more reliable. They have a long way to go but at least i'm no longer spammed with endless ads about my penis size. At least the occasional advert is now relevant.

      • > They have a long way to go but at least i'm no longer spammed with endless ads about my penis size

        Even spammers know a lost cause when they see one :P

  • "People of Color" = weak? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Did he REALLY say that? Ok no exactly but what would make "people of colour’s" weaknesses any more vulnerable than 'white people' (though of course white is a colour too so this whole differentiation is racist to begin with).

    O what he MEANT was that by percentage 'people of colour' are more poor than others...but he already said 'pool' so why would the extra distinction be necessary? O, of course so we can throw in the race card of course. But how about we just leave this at 'weaknesses of the poor'..

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by KGIII ( 973947 )

      Oh no... He meant what he said.

      As a "person of color" I get pretty tired of it. Just 'cause I got a little black and Amerindian in me doesn't mean I need extra aid, thanks.

      See, I know this might sound strange but I'm actually kind of offended by affirmative action. Affirmative action is the system saying, "Here, nigger. You can't do it on your own. So, we'll give you a head start because your merits are not good enough in this white man's world."

      (I can say nigger, right? 'Cause I got some black in me... Fuc

    • I'm a person of color. Pale pinkish-beige is a color.

  • Why... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Eyezen ( 548114 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2016 @07:31PM (#52095027)
    Do we have to bring race into everything. Payday loans prey on poor people, period end of story. People of both color and means dont fall prey to payday loans schemes, in fact i'd say its racist to suggest they do.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      There are more "people of color" that are impoverished than "white people", so the comment is technically correct. (According to this [wikipedia.org], anyway.) So it would be reasonable to assume that non-whites would fall victim to predatory lending at a higher rate than whites. It's not necessarily racist if it's a factually correct statement.

      I do, however, agree with you. There is no reason to bring race into this equation, it is done solely for the purpose of "scoring points" (gaining clicks).

      • Its insulting to both people of color with means and caucasians without (my plight means nothing because Im white) Poor is poor.

  • so called "payday loans" may indeed be harmful. however there is a method to ban harmful things; democratically enacted legislation. (indeed some states and countries have baned them).

    but should we trust and rely on big corps like google to nanny us and make us safe according to their own vague moral code?

    would google next decide interest over certain percentage as harmful? perhaps google would decide all interest taking as usury, and ( like some fundamental religious nuts/muslim countries now, and many Ch

    • perhaps google would decide all interest taking as usury, and ( like some fundamental religious nuts/muslim countries now, and many Christian ones in past)

      All interest taking is usury, and it doesn't take any kind of religious motivation to think so. The word "usury" literally means a fee for use (of money, implicitly, but any other kind of rent is the same thing in practice; and old religious bans on usury didn't account for that).

      • thanks for etymology.

        i am using word 'usury' in the most common senses currently in use, as defined by top definitions in most dictionaries, which are variations of "charging unreasonable/excessive/illegal rate of interest for loans". and as it was used in religious texts (and translations), and laws influenced by them, which include definition of charging of any interest on loans.
         

  • This is just a token gesture by the google trying to convince us "Don't be evil" is still relevant, when now the actual motto is "All your attention are belong to google".

    Oh yes. It also persuades me that the payday lender ads were not particularly profitable, so the token gesture was cheap enough.

    Here are a couple of suggestions that the google could implement if they actually cared about being less evil:

    1. Stop supporting scammers in Google Play by exposing the business models. They don't have to force th

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      Still hate typos (and I did Preview carefully). Near the end, "They system" should be "The system" or even "Gmail" specifically.

      Looking over the other comments, I'm rather astounded by the defenses of loan sharks. Obviously paid shills or actual sharks, but it reminds me to wish that slashdot had some reputation-based options. My own simpleminded setting would probably be to hide any account that is not old enough. Not sure if two months would be long enough, but the setting should be tweakable by the user.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by KGIII ( 973947 )

      I'm a bit curious about why you think Google should be checking into a business model - and, really, what does that phrase actually mean?

      The second makes me curious... What the hell is "dropboxes?" (I'm kind of fluent in criminal terminology (2 proficiency slots in Thieve's Cant.) What's that?
      Also, why would they trust users or are you saying that you should flag them and they should review 'em?
      I'm not actually sure why you'd expect Google (or really

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shanen ( 462549 )

        Not "polite request".

        Not saying you're a troll or whatever, but that's because I don't care that much about you, at least based upon that "response".

        I don't feel like apologizing for writing about complicated topics. If I were a serious author then at least I would care about simplifying my writing or motivating readers to make sufficient efforts to understand them, eh?

        So I'll follow your lead and change the topic. My new topic is the moderation system. There should be several orthogonal dimensions with plu

  • If you are poor or have bad money management you may have a choice like.

    1) Having your electricity turned off.
    2) Overdrafting your checking or exceeding your credit card limit triggering large fees
    3) Going to payday lending service and paying the fee.

    I assume the payday lending fee is much less than option 2. This is the only reason why banks are so angry and lobby to get rid of their competitors.

    • If you have no money handling skills, do you think you'll qualify for a credit card? If you live hand to mouth, live on welfare, you've pawned everything valuable and you need cash now then your only choice is payday loans.

      Up here in Canada I watch them line up at places like Moneymart or Cashmoney at baby bonus day and the end of the month when welfare cheques come out. My wife manages a store at kfc and they get slammed with the 3 day millionaires.

      Moneymart and cashmoney are always advertising the c

      • Moneymart and cashmoney are always advertising the cheapest payday loans. Its a total scam. Welfare receipients should be forced to open a *real* bank account and not have cheques cut.

        Many of the check cashing folks have either overdrawn their bank account so much that they're on a blacklist at the bank, or else the account they have is already overdrawn and they don't want the bank to take the money they owe it from their check, which is what'll happen if they deposit it.

        For the target audience of payday l

    • Right. Google's new policy is the one that's actually regressive.

      If anybody wants to hear a dispassionate discussion of the issues, try here:

      http://www.podtrac.com/pts/red... [podtrac.com]

  • So will Google lend money to these high risk, low equity individuals, whose only way to live through the month before the next paycheck arrives may be by borrowing money from these so called 'loan sharks', people who are willing to lend money out to the highest risk individuals?

  • It's a nice gesture, but they need to drive through my old neighborhood sometime. In the southeast, it used to be that the liquor store to church ratio was the gauge of a town's squalor. These days, you can't go drive down a street without passing a handful of payday loan places. Internet advertising isn't to draw people in who otherwise wouldn't consider a payday loan, it's to make sure your slice of the pie is the biggest. Some cities pass ordinances limiting the number of payday loan places, but in many

  • If you're an employer, you can help (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Wednesday May 11, 2016 @09:46PM (#52095657)
    These things are poison. Thinking of them in terms of interest rates just confuses the matter. Once someone living paycheck-to-paycheck uses a payday loan whose fees + interest works out to (say) 15% of their paycheck they basically have to live the next two weeks on just 85% of what they usually live off of. Thus guaranteeing they'll be short again next paycheck, forcing them to take another payday loan, and driving them further underwater.

    When I learned that a not-insignificant number of our employees were using these, I got the board to approve no-fee advances on your paycheck for emergencies (i.e. on request once a month, after manager approval if you needed it more often - to prevent someone from abusing this to go from living paycheck-to-paycheck, to living half-paycheck-to-half-paycheck). If you're one week into the 2-week pay period, you've already earned your pay for that first week. The company is just holding onto your money to simplify the bookkeeping. If you have an emergency and need to tap that paycheck early, there's really no reason for the company to refuse (unless they're also surviving payroll to payroll).

    The long-term solution is to build up enough savings so you aren't living paycheck-to-paycheck. But employer-approved pay advances can help stop someone from slipping into the negative due to a one-time unexpected expense, at which point these loan sharks will make sure they stay underwater.

    And contrary to what someone else commented, these loans do not prey on poor people. This isn't an income problem, it's a cashflow problem. You can be poor (low income) and never need a payday loan (income > expenses, and have sufficient savings to tide you over to next paycheck in the event of an emergency). These loans prey on people living paycheck-to-paycheck. You can be rich and run into the exact same problem if your expenses exceed your income and you don't have a savings buffer. That's how professional athletes and celebrities wind up going bankrupt.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by KGIII ( 973947 )

      This is going to sound really, really crazy - but hear me out.

      The employers can help (I know, I used to be one and I still do) by actually paying your employees to live comfortably and having the chance to build up security equity with myriad methods.

      I know that paying your employees well is a crazy idea but I had pretty good results with it. Unadjusted, in 1998 or so, we paid anywhere from 90 to 120k to start programmers who could learn modeling and domain-specific topics and we paid engineers just about t

    • And contrary to what someone else commented, these loans do not prey on poor people. This isn't an income problem, it's a cashflow problem. You can be poor (low income) and never need a payday loan (income > expenses, and have sufficient savings to tide you over to next paycheck in the event of an emergency). These loans prey on people living paycheck-to-paycheck.

      THIS. A lot of people who take out these loans are poor people who have "gotten by" pretty well for a while, but they are hit by a sudden issue where they need a chunk of cash quickly. If they don't have an emergency reserve, payday loans may be their only option.

      And I think it's important to note that we don't solve these persons' problems just by shutting down the payday loan industry through regulation (or by Google not running ads for them). This is the economic catch-22 of credit regulation -- eve

  • If your car breaks down and you take a payday loan to get it fixed and not lose what job you have, it's a positive development for you even if you have to pay extra $20 on pay day. If you end up taking a loan before every paycheck, not so much.

    Bottom line, even low income / high risk individuals can benefit from access to some kind of legal credit, even on lousy terms. Lots in developing world don't, hence the movement to provide microloans.

    In the ideal world, payday lenders would be akin to credit unions,

  • ban ads with DOWNLOAD buttons (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Thursday May 12, 2016 @12:46AM (#52096261)

    Dear Google, please also ban ads with great big "download" buttons on software-download pages. I hate those. Their sole point is to deceive.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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